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Jewish World Review
Jan. 11, 2007
/ 21 Teves, 5767
Give Bush a chance: Voters are willing to see if he'll get it right on war
By
Michael Goodwin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Even a blatant lie, if repeated often and loudly, can be mistaken for the truth. So it is with the claim that the results of November's election amounted to a public demand to bring our troops home from Iraq.
No matter how loud that claim is made, it is not even close to true. The election results were a vote against our bloody failure in Iraq. They were a demand for success.
Withdrawal, for those keeping honest score, was not the policy of the Democratic Party. Very few of its candidates advocated withdrawal. Even Sen. Chuck Schumer, who orchestrated the Dem Senate takeover, told me in November, "I'd say 65% of the vote was a rejection of Bush's stay-the-course plan and 35% were voting to take a chance on Democrats."
Or, as columnist Charles Krauthammer noted, Democrats didn't get a mandate on Iraq because they didn't run on anything except being anti-Bush. To get a mandate, you have to run "for" something.
Those are the facts, and they are the backdrop to President Bush's crucial speech tonight on Iraq. The American people, frustrated and demoralized over the war, still seem ready to give the President a final chance to make the case for changes that will involve new troops. Democrats, and his Republican critics, should do no less. Those who are already planning to block Bush's plan, even before they know it, do their country a disservice in a time of war.
That's not to argue that whatever Bush says is good enough and worthy of support. Far from it. The idea of adding 20,000 or so more troops doesn't make sense unless the strategy and tactics also change. That's Bush's challenge — he's got to persuade us that his new plan will make a difference. That it's not just "stay the course" in a new wrapper.
Can he do it? I'm hoping yes, but fearing no. Almost nothing he has said about Iraq has happened as he said it would. The victory he repeatedly promised is now a national sore. Nearly four years after the invasion, things are getting worse. Even the execution of Saddam was botched, a fitting metaphor for the two governments — ours and Iraq's — that seem unable and unwilling to get it right.
Most important, the possibility exists that it may simply be too late for us to salvage a decent outcome. Iraqi society is so seared with blood and hate that it is almost impossible to imagine a civil, stable nation emerging from the rubble.
Yet we have to hope Bush and his new secretary of defense and new commanders have found a new formula, one that quickly shows results. Like Winston Churchill's line that democracy is the worst form of government except for the others, Bush's plan, if it is coherent and comprehensive, will be the lesser of all evils.
Withdrawal will almost certainly result in a slaughter and in Iraq becoming a failed state taken over by terror groups or Iran. Official partition, another bad idea, seems impossible to achieve without a full civil war. Any of those outcomes would be a disaster for Iraqis and the entire Mideast.
And they would all make Americans less secure.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.
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